


Fixed

by everybodylies



Category: Discworld - Terry Pratchett, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Crossover, Gen, Night Watch, The People's Revolution of the Glorious Twenty-Fifth of May
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-07
Updated: 2015-02-07
Packaged: 2018-03-10 21:46:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,457
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3304601
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/everybodylies/pseuds/everybodylies
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Doctor gets called to the Discworld on a consult.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fixed

**Author's Note:**

> Set sometime during Doctor Who series 4 and in the middle of Night Watch.

“Somewhere warm, definitely,” Donna says. “And somewhere with good tea, haven’t had that for a while.”

The Doctor nods excitedly, bounds over to the dashboard. “I’ve got just the planet in mind—”

The TARDIS phone rings. The Doctor picks it up, and Donna raises an eyebrow. “Someone’s _calling_ you? How low-tech. How behind the times—”

“Shh,” says the Doctor, putting a finger to his lips and pressing the phone closer to his ear.

“Don’t you shush me—”

“Shh!”

“ _Shh!_ ”

After listening for a moment, the Doctor slowly grins. He puts the phone back down and starts running around the console and pulling levers. “We’re taking a detour!”

“And where exactly are we taking this detour?” Donna asks.

“Just you wait, Donna Noble,” the Doctor says gleefully. “Ohoho, just you wait. You’re going to love this!”

“Oh, will I?” Donna counters. “What about my warm planet with good tea?”

The Doctor wrinkles his forehead, tilting his head to the side. “It’s lukewarm. With… mediocre tea. But you’ll love it, I guarantee it.”

“You’d better deliver, buddy boy,” Donna replies, crossing her arms and smiling.

Lights flash as the TARDIS delivers them to their destination. When the ship stops shaking, the Doctor runs over and throws the doors open, beckoning to Donna. “Come on then, take a look.”

Donna walks over and gasps when she catches a glimpse of what lays outside the door.

“Is that…?”

“Yes, it is.”

“A flat world on top of four elephants on top of a bloody tortoise floating through space?”

The Doctor frowns. “Er, no, actually. It’s a turtle, you see.”

“Oh, shut up,” Donna snaps, but she can’t help smiling.

“Welcome to the Discworld, Donna!”

Donna manages to tear her eyes away from the sight before her to look at the Doctor. “What are we doing here?”

“I’ve been called for a consult.”

“A consult? From _you_?”

The Doctor opens his mouth in protest. “Is that so shocking?”

“You’re not even a real doctor.”

“Yes, well, it’s not a medical consult; it’s a temporal consult.”

The Doctor returns to the controls and flies the TARDIS towards a large city sitting on a river. He lands in the back garden of a small building in the south of the city, on a bed of gravel which shifts slightly when the TARDIS touches down. The Doctor and Donna step out and are met by a small, wrinkly old man wearing orange robes.

“Sweeper!” the Doctor exclaims, walking forward and giving the old man a warm hug. “You called?”

“Doctor!” Lu-Tze responds. “Yes, I did. I’m very happy to see you.”

The Doctor steps back and gestures to Donna. “Sweeper, this is Donna Noble. Donna, this is Lu-Tze.”

“But you can call me Sweeper,” Lu-Tze says. He stares at Donna with friendly eyes, and Donna thinks he somehow looks like much more than just a sweeper, and, and at the same time, nothing more than just a sweeper.

“Nice to meet you,” Donna replies, shaking his hand. “Do you… sweep things?”

Lu-Tze’s eyes crinkle at the corners. “Why, yes, I do.”

“He’s also a History Monk,” the Doctor explains. “Time on the Disc is more… slippery than in other places. The History Monks work to ensure that things happen.”

“So… without you…” Donna says, “things would not happen?”

“Give the woman a cigar! Correct again!” Lu-Tze exclaims. He turns to the Doctor, and with not a hint of sarcasm, says, “She’s a smart one.”

“That she is,” the Doctor agrees. His face then stiffens, turns serious. “So, Sweeper, I couldn’t help but notice the date. The twenty-fourth of May, the year of the Gullible Seagull. This wouldn’t happen to be…?”

Lu-Tze nods solemnly. “The Glorious Revolution, yes.” He gestures to a door that leads inside the building. “Let’s get to work, shall we?”

“Yes, of course,” the Doctor says, but first he turns to Donna. He rummages around in his pockets and pulls out a handful of gold coins. “Here’s some local money. You can exit to the street that way. There’s a lot to see around here, but do be careful; there is a bit of a revolution going on.”

Donna’s mouth falls open, and she pushes the Doctor’s hand away. “Oi, trying to get rid of me, are you?”

“What?”

“Donna’s not smart enough to play with the big boys, is that how it is?”

“What?” the Doctor says, eyes wide and frightened. “I just said you were smart, don’t you remember?”

“No.” She purses her lips and crosses her arms.

The Doctor throws his hand up in the air. “Oh, for—Look, it’s not like that. I just figured you’d want to see everything, and we’re going to be talking about very technical and boring things for a while—”

“I honestly don’t know what you’d do without me. I think your ego might just pop.” Donna shakes her head and links her arm with the Doctor’s. “Look, I’ve been traveling with you for, what, a couple months now? I’m sure I’ve picked up some things here and there. I could probably help more than you can!” The Doctor shrugs powerlessly, and Donna nods at Lu-Tze. “As you were.”

Lu-Tze smiles and leads them into the small monastery. Inside, dozens of small metal cylinders line the walls. The cylinders all spin rapidly at the same speed, filling the air with a loud squeaking noise.

“Procrastinators,” the Doctor explains to Donna. “They bend time. Very similar to the motor of the TARDIS, in fact. Same principle.” To Lu-Tze, he says, “I’ve never seen them so active.”

“They’re moving a lot of time, right now,” Lu-Tze agrees. “We’re doing a lot of high-energy work, and we’re trying to keep it secret from the Abbot. Qu’s basically having an aneurysm in the back room.”

“What’s happening?” the Doctor asks.

“Well, it all started with a b.6728 situation, which then progressed into an f.4923.”

“Oh, my,” the Doctor murmurs. “We learned about those in grade school. I’ve never actually experienced one in real life.”

“Luckily, we were able to stop it before it devolved into a g.3942—”

“All right,” Donna says loudly, putting her hands up in the air. “You win, I’m bored.”

“I—”

“Shut it,” Donna commands. She raises a finger in warning. “Don’t say ‘I told you so.’ Just give me the money, and I’ll be on my way.”

The Doctor chuckles and complies. “Be careful,” he says again. Donna merely rolls her eyes and marches off.

Lu-Tze watches her go. “It’s unfortunate,” he remarks quietly.

“What?”

He looks at the Doctor, and his face is surprisingly somber. “Never mind. Is it not said, ‘Let us not dwell on the future’?”

The Doctor shrugs. “As you were saying?”

“Ah, yes, we were able to stop the f.4923 before it devolved into a g.3942.”

“How did you manage that?”

Waving a hand, Lu-Tze says, “Oh, there was this whole business with the Five Horsemen of the Apocalypse, the granddaughter of Death, my apprentice turning out to be the personification of time—yadda, yadda. I cannot be bothered to explain it all. That was not the problem.”

“I see.”

“The problem was that during the f.4923, there was a temporal storm that caused much collateral damage. We managed to repair most of it.”

“And what you didn’t repair?”

“Two men got sent back in time about thirty years to now. One man was Carcer Dun, a murderer, and the other was Samuel Vimes, Commander—”

“Sam Vimes? He’s involved?” The Doctor’s face took on a dreamy quality.

Lu-Tze chuckled. “Ah, yes, I forgot you’re quite a fan.”

“ _A_ fan?” The Doctor shook his head. “More like _the_ fan. I’ll never forget the way he solved the Patrician’s murder. Oh, I do hope we run into him today.”

“Perhaps not,” Lu-Tze says. “He’s not in the best of moods.”

“Why?”

“Let’s go upstairs.”

Lu-Tze leads the Doctor up three flights of stairs to a small pagoda that sits on top of the temple, open to the air. The wooden floor, painted red, creaks under their steps. Another younger monk is gently polishing a large bronze bell that hangs from the ceiling. From this height, the Doctor can see the beginnings of barricades being built in the distance. He can hear a lot of faint shouting.

“It should have been simple to send Vimes and Carcer back their own time,” Lu-Tze begins again. “Unfortunately, Carcer ended up murdering somebody almost immediately after he arrived.” He makes a little sound of annoyance in his throat. “A few minutes later, and we would’ve had him. That man really gets on my _thungas_ , he does.”

“Ooh, ooh, let me guess,” the Doctor says. He squeezes his eyes shut for a few seconds, then opens them. “Carcer murdered someone who will save Vimes’s life, so Vimes has to stay here and save his own life.”

Lu-Tze raises his eyebrows, impressed. “Close, but no cigar for you, Doctor. Carcer murdered John Keel.” The Doctor’s eyes widen, as he begins to understand. “Not only did Keel save Vimes many times over, but he _made_ Vimes. He took him under his wing, taught him everything he knew. Without him, Vimes does not become His Grace, the Duke of Ankh, Commander of the City Watch. Not even close.”

The Doctor thinks for a moment. “… Any chance he still solves the Patrician’s murder?”

“No.”

“Ah.” The Doctor sighs. “I assume you’ve told him to take the place of his former mentor and teach his younger self everything he knows? A very neat time loop.”

“Yes. Interestingly enough, when Vimes first appeared, he was mugged, which gave him the same scar and eye-patch that Keel had.”

“Historical Imperative?”

“I put money on Narrative Causality, myself.”

“So, where is the problem?” the Doctor asks.

“The problem,” says Lu-Tze morosely, “is in the seven deaths will occur during the Glorious Revolution. The seven deaths that Sam Vimes will carry with him, that will weigh him down, for the next thirty years. Given the chance to do it all again, Vimes will definitely _not_ let those people go without a fight.” He stares out the window at the city, the barricades growing higher by the minute. “He’s... _changing_ things, already has. He stopped a massacre that was supposed to happen. Saved people who were supposed to die. And if the history diverges too much… I’m not sure we’ll be able to put him back. And I’m not sure what happens after that.”

“You tell him that?”

Lu-Tze’s face is pained. “Not… in so many words, no. I just told him he had to keep his younger self alive and well-trained. I was worried that forbidding him to save lives might ignite a bit of a rebellious streak in him. Seems that happened anyway.” Wringing his hands, he looks down at his feet and notes unsatisfactorily that there remain several small piles of dust scattered around the floor. He really needs to track down the little punk who usually sweeps up here and teach him about this fantastic new technology called a “dust-pan.”

He turns back to the Doctor. “So what is your professional opinion? Should I get Sam Vimes back in here? Tell him that he needs to start doing things by the book or else the entire nature of causality will collapse? Or should I just let him keep hacking away at history like Dr. Chopper?”

“You may be right in leaving Vimes be,” the Doctor offers, his voice unsure. “Is it not said, ‘History finds a way’?”

Lu-Tze sighs. He’d said this to Sam Vimes just a few hours earlier, but truthfully, he was not as confident as he put on. “Yes, but is it not also said,” Lu-Tze counters, “‘Just because a saying sounds rather pithy does not mean that Lu-Tze did not come up with it while on the damn crapper’?”

“Ah,” the Doctor hums thoughtfully. “Can’t say I’ve heard that one before.”

“Yes, history often does find a way,” Lu-Tze admits. “But history has never come up against Sam Vimes before.”

“Good point, good point,” the Doctor agrees. “I would not put it past Sam Vimes to undo causality.”

The Doctor begins pacing around in a small circle, floor creaking with every step. He taps his forehead with his finger once, twice, three times. And then his eyes widen. “Oh. Oh, oh, ohhhh. The Revolution is a fixed point in time, is it?” he asks Lu-Tze hurriedly.

“Yes. A Revolution must occur.”

“Well, then I’ll tell you a story. A story about a fixed point on Earth. But not just any fixed point. The motherload of fixed points. A point so fixed, it was hammered into stone. In Donna’s time, people learned about this fixed point in grade school.”

Lu-Tze nods. “Go on.”

“The fixed point was a volcano eruption. It took out an entire city, no survivors. That’s part of what made it so famous, actually. The only witness was miles away.” The Doctor grimaces. “And I accidentally took Donna back to that day, to Volcano Day. And she insisted that we save someone, anyone. I told her no, can’t do it, sorry, fixed point in time. But Donna—oh, beautiful Donna—she insisted. So we saved a family of four. Time didn’t collapse.”

“I see,” Lu-Tze murmurs, thinking deeply.

“I say, let Sam Vimes save who he can. The universe may not be fair, but… I believe it is merciful.”

Lu-Tze lets out a breath, and smiles. “Thank you, Doctor. Your advice has brought me much relief. And please thank Donna for me, too.”

A little while later, the Doctor pilots the TARDIS to Sator Square, touching down a few feet away from Donna. The city center is still bustling and active, filled with its usual merchants, musicians, and beggars, even with the rapidly approaching barricades visible in the background. Well, that’s Ankh-Morpork for you.

Donna pauses when she notices the Doctor appearing, a meat pie halfway to her mouth. “Nice of you to finally join me,” she says. “I’ve actually been having a wonderful time without you. It’s a wonderful city, and there are dwarfs and trolls and giant clay people—”

The Doctor ignores her, and instead points a shaking finger at the meat pie. “That. What is that. Where did you get that.”

Frowning, Donna replies, “Well, not that it’s any of your business, but I got it from him over there. Mr. Dibbler.”

“No, don’t do that. Don’t eat that.” The Doctor promptly plucks the meat pie from her fingers and tosses it away.

“Oi!”

“Trust me, I just saved your life.” The Doctor slings an arm around her. “Let’s go, I’ll buy you some curry instead.”


End file.
